Frank Fahey yesterday acknowledged that changes to the Constitution might be needed to reflect more accurately the position of women in Irish society.
The Minister of State at the Department of Justice was speaking at a UN committee in New York, which was reviewing the State's implementation of a convention to eliminate discrimination against women.
The Minister told the UN Committee on the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women that Ireland had made "dramatic strides" in combating gender-based inequality.
He said increased female participation had taken place in recent years but he conceded that much more work remained to be done.
"I have not come here today to tell you that women in Ireland have achieved the level of equality with men that we all desire, because they haven't. But I have come to say that in a short space of time, we have made dramatic strides and that we are well placed to address the remaining deficits where they exist."
In response to concern over the wording of the Constitution, Mr Fahey said it needed to be examined in order to reflect better the position of women in Irish society.
"I am very aware that other provisions in our Constitution need to be looked at, in order to more accurately reflect the reality of social and economic changes in Ireland in recent years and Article 41, which deals with the family, and the position of women comes to mind in this context."
He added: "Notwithstanding the widely acknowledged need to rephrase the Constitution to better reflect the reality of modern Ireland, I am satisfied that the combination of the Constitution's explicit affirmation of the equality of all citizens, and the introduction of far reaching equality legislation in the form of the Employment Equality Act 1998 and the Equal Status Act 2000, together represent a corpus of legislation that underscores equality between women and men in Ireland."
Ireland acceded to the UN convention in 1985, which is a key human rights instrument in relation to women's rights.
Mr Fahey was joined at the UN yesterday by the State's permanent representative in New York, Ambassador Richard Ryan, and by Department of Justice officials in the area of gender equality, immigration policy and violence against women.
